My design is essentially a rectangular board with a grid of holes. Visualize a peg board. I created the design with Inkscape, imported the SVG file into the OpenBuilds CAM software, selected the holes, selected path (inside) and everything looked good. However, the g-code created is not in any way optimized because it appears it selects holes randomly, not by proximity. Thus there is a lot of jumping around from one area of the board to another. Is there some way to tell the software to first sort the paths in some fashion, say by y coordinate and then by x? Or perhaps have some other optimization strategy that reduces machine movements? I have tried to use the restack feature of Inkscape to influence the order of the various paths, but it seems I can't get OpenBuilds CAM to change what it is doing.
It's fully under your control. Select first entity you want to cut, then create a toolpath, Select next entity, another toolpath and so forth In a "select-all" (the lazy way) it follows the order of the entities in the original SVG XML
The board I am cutting has 216 holes. So you are telling me I have to manually select each one and specify what should be done? That makes no sense. This is a small version of what I want to do. I will have in the end potentially a thousand holes. Wouldn't it make sense to offer an ordering or optimization feature to avoid having to repeat hundreds of identical steps?
Some options: 1) Select smaller groups (a row for example) together to still minimise travel. The legwork is once off - save the workspace - have it ready any time you have to make it again. 2) Use a more advanced CAM - as your projects become more advanced, it makes sense to upgrade your workflows as well 3) Post Process your gcode (at own risk, for example GCODE Optimizer )
Thank you for the tip with the gcode optimizer. It seems to do a great job, even better optimized than I was hoping for. I haven't cut it yet, so don't know if it introduces problems. A simple G0 sorting feature would be great to have in OpenBuilds CAM but based on the pushback received so far I am not holding my breath. Is the OpenBuilds CAM software open source? Could the community help? I wouldn't mind coding some of the features I am suggesting.
Checkout the FORK button on the settings tab and yes, nicely done pull requests are accepted and appreciated.
Thanks. JavaScript isn't my forte but I will take a look. It certainly opens a new option for me to get what I am asking for.
